THE CLINTON POST OFFICE FIRE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2394, 18 January 1900, Page 73

THE CLINTON POST OFFICE FIRE.

AN ARREST MADE. An arrest was made on Friday by Detectiv* Oooney at Clinton of a young man named Peter Robert Dewar, ion a charge of setting fire to the Clinton railway station, recently destroyed. It is stated that-Dewar, who was a cadet in the Clinton Post Office, attached to the station, which was also destroyed by the fire, has confessed to tampering with registered letters that came through his hands while at Clinton, and the assumption is that tha act of incendiarism, if committed, was done in order to hide his guilt. Dewar is also charged with Hie theft of jewellery from registered parcels, and will therefore have to answer a dual charge. He was brought before the court at Clinton on Friday morning, and brought to town on Saturday by a constable. Some excitement was occasioned in a public thoroughfare in Te Aro on Thursday afternoon by the extraordinary behaviour of a woman who was running about barefooted, flourishing a knife. The unfortunate woman, it appears, is of somewhat weak intellect, and she was restored to her friends before anythir more serious had occurred. ' The Czarina has a shawl which she value* very highly. It was sent by the ladies oi Orenburg, a town in south-western Ruft=ia. It reached her in a wooden box with silver hooks and hinges, the outside being er.ibellished with designs' of spears, turbans, whips, etc., on -a "round of blue enamel, that being the colour of the cossack uniform. The shawl is about 10 yards square, but it so exquisitely fine that, it can be passed through n ring," and when folded makes a parcel of a few inches only. Mr Vop&ler, a farmer at Eketahuna, had an exciting experience recently (says the Express). While out eeling he fell nearly 701fc down a precipitous embankment into a creek, being temporarily stunned by the fall, and having a narrow escape of being drowned. He managed, however, to reach shore in an exhausted condition. His cries for help were, responded to, and ropes were lowered to enable him to ascend the embankment down which he had fallen. One of these broke, but Mr Vossler was at length landed safels; Ptt, the bank.